


Patterns

by webcricket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Belonging, Falling In Love, Fluff, Home, Love at First Sight, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:25:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webcricket/pseuds/webcricket
Summary: Castiel has spent years searching for a sense of belonging – patterns, angelic self-reflection, and love at first sight.





	Patterns

Since the dawn of creation, Castiel’s especial attention to patterns and their interplay singularized him from other less intently observant angels. It’s what made him a particularly effectual soldier, for the rigidness of rules exist as the ultimate pattern to obey. It’s what made the eventuality of his fall from Heaven’s ranks inevitable, for aberrations occur even within the regularity of any rule.

Unique among his obedience blinded kin, Castiel sees the righteous path; over and over again, in exercising the choice of free will he fell and fought for, he pursues the deviations in his Father’s divine design – those glaring interruptions of pattern, rebellious disparities in uniformity surfacing, as he himself did, in a sea of sameness. He trudges ever onward to this end, numbed to near exhaustion in the navigation of angelically novel emotions, through a way impeded by the unremitting companionship of failure and doubt; wayward in weariness, he seeks with celestial fortitude in these incongruities the place where he fits – that longed for peaceful repose where his faith might flow, foundations restored, in an infinite and unbroken pattern.

Unaware of the ultimately self-serving nature of his quest, as is the wont of any life worth living, he strives, simply, to do what’s _right_.

Sustaining the friendship of Sam and Dean, the hunter’s lives a blood-stained flannelled pattern of chaos and brotherly love steeped in the supernatural, seems _right_. He felt it the fateful moment he laid a palm to Dean’s shoulder to lift his soul from the ruins of perdition. He recognized it deep in his duty fettered heart, although, cowed by the presence of Uriel, he denied it then, when he clasped and shook the hand of Sam, the boy abomination, all those long years ago.

Weaving a heavenly stitch of trench coat taupe into the fabric of their existence, Castiel meshes with these men, compliments them in comradery, more so than with his own kind; and yet, despite self-sacrificial devotion to the safeguard and survival of his chosen family, the shroud of his own being remains raw – a pattern unfinished, faded at the outer limits of its potential.

Continually focusing his energies on the urgency of what must be done in service to the Winchesters, emptiness inside unfulfilled and festering a sense of restlessness inharmonious to the firm fidelity he feels toward his friends, no one knows, not even the angel, that what he’s really looking for are threads of _home_ – a bastion of true belonging to house his heavy heart. And so, always subtly searching for signs, vessel and mind, the solitary seraph wanders.

In the silences surrounded by his friends and discounted by them as nothing more than aloof angelic awkwardness, in the brief breaks of breath hanging between spoken words and unuttered thoughts, in the long lonely wakeful nights, in the longer stretch of days struggling to protect those he cares about and barely succeeding, or worse, sometimes _not_ , everywhere and in everything, the angel takes notice of details, sizeable and small, both mundane and otherwise, in a never-ending hunt for that omitted bit of pattern in his life inner longing tells him he will know on sight.

In wooded meadows, he watches bees. He observes their diligent dart bloom to bloom, delicate petals dipping in acquiescence to compact buzzing bodies; then, returned to the hive, he stands, ear pressing mossed bark at the base of a hollowed tree trunk, blue gaze uplifted in wonderment as he listens to the dizzying dance of a blurred black and yellow body mapping the way to sustenance for her sisters – the circle complete.

So, too, in the hush of the forest bordering the bunker does he note inherent order in the jumbled web of roots buried just beneath his feet – the larger trees ferrying nutrients to those saplings whose scrawny branches don’t yet penetrate the canopy to bathe in more than the filtered golden glow of life-giving sunlight. The orderly patterns of creation occur wherever he looks in nature; but in their perfect constructs, although he may dwell for a while in comfortable, if also melancholy, contemplation, there is no permanent niche therein for him to occupy.

Like many of the iterant lost pursuing the elusive pattern portending peace and discovery of a fundamental purpose, Castiel retreats, circumstances permitting, into the literally bound, but notionally limitless, realms of books.

On this particular sunny summer Friday afternoon, the angel sits, strenuously absorbed in study based on the double furrow demarking his brow, bent over a table at the Lebanon Public Library. Blocks of sun blaze through the hazy glass of lead window-panes to seize upon swirls of dust which, so emboldened by brightness, seem to solidify in the space between aisles. The rows of massive richly-scented mahogany bookshelves tower over his slouched form where they reach in height almost to the exposed shadows of pipes and vents crisscrossing an industrial-style ceiling. The library is seemingly deserted save for he and the dour-faced unseasonably warm grey-woolen pencil-skirted wearing docent. Methodically re-shelving returned periodicals, she pauses occasionally to push square-rimmed black spectacles up her nose and eye him skeptically, perhaps judging his equally unseasonable attire as _odd_.

Drawn to the naturalist themes, the angel presently peruses a minute leather-bound volume of Robert Frost’s poetry. He knows the poems by heart – these, and so many others, a leftover of his run-in with the scribe of God – however, he finds certain solace in seeing the pattern of letters running across a page, in the smooth feel of paper flipping beneath a fingertip, and in the musty old-hide odor of the binding holding the whole mass of text in seamless union.

So enraptured is he with the experience of a boy swinging on birches and debate over roads not taken, he fails to hear your approach.

“Is this seat free?” Arms brimming over with books, you motion at the chair opposite with a wag of your chin. There’s a half dozen other unoccupied tables, but it seems such a shame for this handsome stranger to sit alone; that, and there’s something genuinely compelling about him you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s like you’ve seen him before, here, in this library; but, new to town, it’s impossible as this is the first time you’ve been here.

He peers up, startled blues softening when they land on you – a fresh face, yet with features set in a pattern immediately familiar to him. He knows _you_ , and he understands, too, as he never before appreciated, that home isn’t necessarily a place, sometimes it’s a _person_.

In the flecks of light glinting your irises, a gaze beaming bright and gentle, the stars of every constellation shine. In the contours of the easy smile defining your mouth, corners of finely creased pink lips quirking upward demurely under the intensity of his regard, lay a cavalcade of kisses awaiting love’s unbridled demand. In the supple curves revealed in the outline of your figure, he’s acutely aware of all the places your flesh fits together in intimate rapture. And within the swell of breast, rising somewhat breathless, short and shallow, a heart beats out his name – a name it, and your very soul, knew from the day of their creation, but that now scream in a swift stuttering thread of pulse. He knows it’s not mere coincidence the drum of his vessel’s heart responds to match the pattern of yours in tempestuous time – it’s kismet.

“Yes.” He finally nods in answer and gestures at the vacant spot. “Please.” Poetic tome slipping forgotten from his fingertips, he stands, rounding the table to chivalrously slide out the chair and relieve you of some of your bookish burden.

“Thanks.” Your smile widens. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

Quietude interrupted, the docent sniffles, exhales a disparaging gust of air, and glowers in your general direction. Her protest goes unnoticed.

“I’m Castiel. _Cas_.” He lingers at your side, waiting until you sit to return to his seat.

“Castiel,” you reiterate, rubbing thoughtfully at your chin. “So then, _Cas_ – what’s your story?”

He squints and taps the book of poems castoff in front of him. “It’s actually a collection of poems by Robert Frost.”

You laugh, the sound a delightful chorus of church bells to his celestial perception.

Unseen, the docent flings her arms disdainfully up in the air over the nerve of your noise.

“That’s not what you meant.” The simmering glow of a flustered blush creeps across his cheeks. He sneaks a peak of your disarming smile and the crimson color deepens.

“Not exactly, but it’s a start.” Paying no heed to the fact you only just met, you plunge a palm across the table to settle soothingly over his; your skin radiates a warmth of reassurance.

Thick lashes shutter, his nostrils flare in a bass hummed sigh of relief, and by all appearances the weight of the world rolls off his broad shoulders in reaction to your touch. The enameled blue glass of his eyes gleam with renewed and remarkable brilliance when he again blinks and covers your hand with his own to reflect back the same warmth and … something more … something _magic_.

A pleasant shiver runs up your arm.

He picks up your hand and, turning it over, begins to lightly brush the pattern of grooves etched upon the skin. A sublime smile caresses the bow of his mouth – these winding lines, whorls, and crinkles unfold as a familiar landscape beneath the tender trace of his fingertip. “A start,” he agrees, intonation marked by sheer reverence as he raises your palm to his lips to press a chaste kiss thereon – the kiss of a grateful man adrift at sea for an eternity come finally home to solid ground when hope seemed lost. “Yes, I think you’re right.”


End file.
